Toy Train Museum Coming Carbon's Newest Attraction

October 29, 1992|by WALT ROLAND, The Morning Call

A large addition to a growing number of tourist attractions in Carbon County was opened to the media yesterday by officials, who announced the miniature train museum as an industry that will create jobs and help the economy.

The exhibit, to be known as Pocono Museums Unlimited, is on the property of Herman Steigerwalt along Route 443 in Mahoning Township opposite the Carbon Plaza Mall.

It is easily accessible from the Mahoning Valley Interchange of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, as well as Routes 209, 248, and 145.

The massive O-Gauge model train display, which is expected to draw thousands to the area, will be open to the public at 10 a.m. on Dec. 4, said Agnes McCartney, executive director of the Pocono Mountains Vacation Bureau office in the historic Jersey Central Railroad Station in Jim Thorpe.

The museum hours will be 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and near the train display building there will be gift shops, a hobby store, amusement rides and other facilities.

The site has a large parking lot and a carved wooden train outside the main building welcomes visitors.

Future plans call for an antique and classic car annex.

A mural created by Christine Eubanks showing the beauteous Mahoning Valley countryside is on all four walls surrounding the train display in a room roughly measuring 117 feet by 32 feet.

The Carbon County commissioners at a news conference yesterday in the Courthouse Annex in Jim Thorpe hailed the generosity and hard work of the principals behind the new project:

Steigerwalt, his son Edgar, John Wehr and Joseph Rimsky, McCartney; the Rev. Joseph Kean, a Catholic priest and former pastor of Ss. Peter & Paul Church in Lehighton; and Dr. Joseph Weber of Ashland, a close friend of Kean's and donor of a large collection of vintage model trains.

Dean D.W. DeLong, commission chairman, said the task of converting a defunct chicken barn into a huge model train museum took more than seven years to complete.

The entire package may be worth as much as $500,000, he said, and when fully operational could mean 30 new jobs for the area.

Work began in 1984 when DeLong was president of the Chamber of Commerce and Kean was named Citizen of the Year in Lehighton.

Kean said the idea for a public museum blossomed over a period of years when he sought avenues for people to enjoy his family's large train collection, which he played with as a child, especially at Christmas.

Along the way there were discussions about leaving them in orphanages or convalescent homes or senior citizens centers but these facilities closed or space was inadequate.

Kean talked to McCartney, Steigerwalt, DeLong, Weber and others and eventually plans were formulated for a museum attraction which would be augmented later by Weber's collections of train and trackage.

The idea became one of community enjoyment, Kean said. "Owning all of this is nothing. Sharing it with others is everything," he said.

Kean said completion of the "ecumenical endeavor" involved dozens of workers, including high school students.

Weber said yesterday the exhibit could be meaningful in two ways -- teaching the "Golden Age" of railroads in Carbon County and America, and creating interest among tourists in train outings such as tourist excursions offered by Rail Tours Inc. in Jim Thorpe and others.

Commissioner Thomas C. Gerhard congratulated those behind the project and said: "People will be amazed when they see this and all the work that went into it. It will be a great asset to the township, Lehighton and the county," he said.

Commissioner John D. Mogilski termed the addition "a labor of love" and an attraction "comparable to any of its kind in the world."

Other dignitaries on hand were Robert Uguccioni, executive director of the Pocono Mountains Vacation Bureau in Stroudsburg; Darryl Arner, president of the Lehighton Chamber of Commerce; Wilbur Bauchspies, mayor of Lehighton; John Hanosek, borough manager in Lehighton; Dawn Blocker, a Mahoning Township supervisor; Toni Artuso, director of the county Office of Economic Development.

Uguccioni said: "I am delighted to welcome this major tourist attraction to the Lehighton area, to Carbon County and to the Poconos. It's another economic development tool. As you know tourism is the leading industry in the Poconos and the second leading industry in the state."

He praised the county commissioners and McCartney for their support and said officials are looking forward to many years of great success for the train project.

Artuso said the train museum is a great asset and a wonderful new facility for the county, which she said is bound to increase tourism and related businesses.

The project is not only a working model train exhibit, but a rural and city landscape, with highways and moving cars and trucks, tiny lakes with small fish, water trickling from a mountain, real lizards in a serpentarium, working scrapyards, puffing smokestacks and much more, said Rimsky, an engineer.

Technical ingenuity can be seen throughout as train crossing gates are raised and lowered, a tea kettle creates smokestack steam, hot rocks heat reptile cages, tiny cables pull vehicles along roadways and rain falls from fake clouds in the ceiling.